About Opensim, VirtualWorlds, Computer Games, 3D and Virtual Reality

Tag Archives: second life

I found this is a interesting subject to talk, because recently some blogs are speaking about that “Opensim regions top Second life private sims”, i don’t want to discuss about but just to present some reasons and facts. But, how is this possible ?, here is a easy answer: “Free or Cheap Opensim sims” and another thing is that there are more and more opensim grids providers (and they are still growing) than just one grid provider like Second Life, so that is another of the reasons why they are more opensim regions than second life regions. We aren’t speaking about one opensim service provider, here’s a list I have taken from Opensimulator website:

And may be there will be more Opensim Regions, if there will be more Opensim Grids providers. This is something that will not going stop into the future, Opensimulator is a opensource software and anyone can use it to build a grid server even on your own computer (later I will speak how you can do this). Sometimes when I see this list of the Opensim Grids, its remember to me something very similar with an Opensource Operating System, I am speaking about Linux. There are so many Linux distributions as there are so many Opensim grids on the internet. So how this is possible?, it is a easy answer, because the license of Opensimulator allow to do it:

“OpenSimulator is an open source multi-platform, multi-user 3D application server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows virtual world developers to customize their worlds using the technologies they feel work best – we’ve designed the framework to be easily extensible. OpenSimulator is written in C#, running both on Windows over the .NET Framework and on Unix-like machines over the Mono framework. The source code is released under a BSD License, a commercially friendly license to embed OpenSimulator in products.”

For those who doesn’t knows what it is a “BSD License”, here is an information about (wikipedia):

“BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses. The original license was used for the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system after which it is named.The original owners of BSD were the Regents of the University of California because BSD was first written at the University of California, Berkeley. The first version of the license was revised, and the resulting licenses are more properly called modified BSD licenses.

Being a permissive free software license, the license places minimal restrictions on how the software can be redistributed. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have reciprocity / share-alike requirements.”

The prices are other facts (like the current economic situation in the world) that have taken people to change from a second life sim to a opensim sim, even me I can’t pay for a second life sim which cost around $295 a month and even more than that. With this bargain (free and cheaper opensim sims) it make possible that someone can have a region or a sim.

BUT there is something we need to review, we are comparing all the opensim grids with one grid provider (second life). If you just compare one opensim grid with second life grid, then you will see that it will have less regions. I want to explain this with an example:

“In one big country, there’s a big fastfood company with their own private license hamburger recipe, but in this country there are thousand of small fastfood companies sharing a “free license” hamburger recipe. The big fastfood company has something like two hundred restaurants. While the small fastfood companies have each other a few restaurants.

If you count all restaurants of the all small fastfood companies, offcourse they could be a lot than the big fastfood company. But what happened if you take one of this small fastfood companies and you compare with the big one ?, you will see that always the big company would have more restaurants than any small company in the country.”

So this is how I see it:

Osgrid has 11,919 regions and Second Life has 23356 regions.

I think that you cannot compare all the regions of the opensim grids with the regions of second life grid. You can compare one on one, but not one hundred against one (that’s what I think about). Can you compare all the small stores who sells a “free license ” orange juice formula with a big store with their own”private license” orange juice formula ?.

Before someone anyway will begin to read this post, I want to make clear that this will be one of my longest, I found so much information about Cloud Avatar in Opensim, so I decided to add all this information in here but also i don’t give any kind of tech support or any support on different grids, I just added this information because it worked on my problem and I wanted to share with the opensim grids users.

Usually, I spent some of my free time doing some test on different Sl Viewers with different metaverses (specially testing them on Second Life grid but also other opensim grids related). One of the most common problems that I have found, it is about the well known “cloud avatar”, which make you look like a little white smog or a white cloud.

This is very uncomfortable just because you don’t see yourself and sometimes, also other residents can’t see you. As it is a common problem in SL and it is easy to fix (well depends on the case but usually it can be fixed) but in Opensim it is harder task and even if you are in a standalone sim (running opensim in your own computer with your own server) this can be very annoying, because what ever you do, like cleaning cache, do a character test or even force params to default most of the time this will not work.

If you try to repair The Cloud Avatar in OpenSim with cleaning cache, character test and force params to default, most of the times it will not work, repairing the cloud avatar in opensim seems to be harder to do than SL but I found a useful method that can be helpful.

But the main problem of The Cloud Avatar in OpenSim it isn’t on the platform, the problem just happens with the viewer we are using to log in opensim. If you change or use so different viewers like Phoenix, FireStorm or even Imprudence there could be a problem later with the avatar, specially when you are two diferents versions of a viewers like V1 or V2, it is recommended just to use one viewer to log in opensim (specially V1) so The Cloud Avatar problem no appear again.

When I had the problem with The Cloud Avatar in Opensim Stand Alone (a few days ago), I began to look again on google what could be causing the cloud avatar and how to fix it, because when you look like a simple small white cloud is not nice. After some deep search in diferent webpages I found something in opensim forums but this is a post of a user that get on my attention:

I really don’t think that Phoneix corrupt the MySql database but there is more information about The Cloud Avatar in Opensim from another osgrid user, but if you look at here may be this is what may be happened:

“I’m fairly sure it’s a viewer-side affect. I first logged in to the OS Grid shortly b4 the 1.20 SL viewer came out. Upon upgrading to 1.20 to access OSGrid I never could get out of being a cloud so I went back to the 1.19.1(4) viewer.Have barely the graphics capability on any of my machines to truly appreciate the high end rendering of the newest viewers anyway. I think you can probably put a skin and shape on if one alters appearance using the option under Edit… Appearance…. seems I remember not being able to click on my cloud shape to put on any skins/shapes Unfortunately there are no “stock” avatars in teh Library”

The first thing that everybody needs to make clear is that Phoenix and other viewers don’t corrupt the MySQL database. Both viewers store the inventory information in a diferent way in the database server. Every SL or third parties viewers have new changes and new options to make them better (or worse XP). So if you use the same viewer to connect on SL and Opensim there shouldn’t be any problem but for example if you use two different viewers like Phoenix Viewer, Imprudence or Firestorm on Opensim then information in that is on the database will be stored different. Let’s see this with an example, an avatar that I use on opensim standalone and I change the clothes or outfit just using another viewers (I will log the same account using Firestorm, Dolphin Viewer 2.0 and CoolViewer):

This is the Hippo Avatar I am wearing in FireStorm V3, as you can see it looks as a normal but if log out and I log to another viewer like CoolViewer V1 and I change complete the outfit and I logout again but

When I came back to a V2 looks what happens:

The avatar don’t load like that outfit I am wearing n Cool Viewer V1.5, its a incomplete avatar and this is the first one I created in Firestorm V3, As you can see the outfit information in different viewers are store in a different way on the database server.

With this example I hope that everybody, can understand what I am trying to say because when you log to opensim grids using different viewers so many times then one of this days you could be an “Cloud Avatar”, which is very annoying being cloud in the metaverse but also not a easy to repair (if you don’t know what to do) than in Second Life.

Right now I want to show some information that I found again in osgrid forums where they explain how the cloud avatar can be fixed (which it really works for me), I think this is the easiest way and it should repair everybody’s cloud avatar problem (This tips are for experienced users, if you are a new one then ask for help, I don’t take any responsability misuse of this):

“-Create a new folder in your inventory-Create new shape, skin, eyes and hair (important that you make all 4 wearables) in that folder-Right click the folder and select ‘Replace Outfit’

That should restore your avatar, then you can change back into your regular wearable.”

Here I show in one screenshow only the last step:

With this easy steps your avatar should be normal again, anyway I don’t know if this works 100% in all cases, if this didn’t work on your avatar then you should contact your opensim grid provider and ask them for some help about it. Visit their forums, their chat or even may be sent a email to them and I am sure they will be glad to help you!.